The use of electronic forms has become an increasingly common tool for gathering information from a user of the electronic form. An electronic form may include fields which request information from the user such as a name field, a home address field, an email field, and the like. With the increased use of the Internet, more people are filling out electronic forms. For example, electronic forms may be utilized to collect financial information and authenticate the identity of the user in an electronic commerce transaction. The electronic commerce transaction may exchange money for goods and/or services. Instead of completing a traditional paper-based purchase order form which details shipping information and payment information of the consumer, electronic forms may be utilized to capture this consumer information. Electronic commerce is merely one such example of the use of electronic forms. Many other applications of electronic forms are currently utilized.
With the increased use of electronic forms, supplying information within these forms can be time-consuming, burdensome, and tedious. To automate the completion these electronic forms, browsers such as Internet Explorer™ include an automatic complete function. The browser captures information by monitoring information inputted by the user. At a later time as the user is completing a field within an electronic form, the browser may provide suggestions for completing the field based upon an initial, partial entry by the user. Unfortunately with automatic field completion initiated by a browser, the user typically loses the automatic completion function when utilizing a different computer such as a public kiosk, a cybercafe, or any computer other than the user's usual computer.
In addition, existing browsers with automatic completion typically complete prefixes; for example, to differentiate between “Diane Feinstein” and “Diane Sawyer”, users need to enter “Diane F” or “Diane S” respectively, rather than just typing “Sawyer” to generate a completion to “Diane Sawyer” because “Sawyer” is not a prefix of “Diane Sawyer”.
Additionally, there may be security concerns with automatic field completion utilizing a browser. With automatic field completion within a browser, the browser typically captures all information entered by a user through the browser. In this case, confidential information may be readily available to subsequent users of the browser. The confidential information may contain information such as passwords, social security numbers, credit card accounts, banking accounts, and the like. Revealing this confidential information may cause a breach in security and privacy for the user.
It would be useful, therefore, to have methods and apparatus for improved automatic electronic form completion.